I am currently a Contributing Editor at Wired Magazine in the UK, having written for Wired UK since its launch in 2009, and speak regularly on the impact of developing technologies on consumer behaviors at Wired Consulting events and elsewhere.
In my copious free time, I write for Wired, GQ and elsewhere on the emerging digital culture, from gaming giants to adventurous startups, and provide creative insight for technology companies. In previous lives, I managed corporate communications for a large software company, and was a senior creative at a Hoxton agency. But then again, who wasn't?
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Avengers, Controllers and Games PR in the Wild West of the Superfan

(Note: At the time of writing, I was awaiting comment from both Paul Christoforo and N-Control. I have reproduced text directly from the Penny Arcade website, and have not corrected for spelling or grammar. There is now an update at the end of the piece after response and a press release from N-Control.)

Gaming is a young industry, and gaming PR and serious game journalism even younger. It makes it an exhilarating industry to work in or to follow, but a perilous place for the unwary – as seen by a lightning exchange of shots over Christmas which leaves an American business in peril.

This gunfight all started innocently enough, with a customer email sent to a marketing department asking for confirmation on whether a gift would arrive in time for Christmas. The product was the Avenger Controller, a cross between a PlayStation game controller and a randy squid.

This remarkable contraption was originally designed by David Kotkin, an art teacher, to help one of his pupils, who suffered from epidermolysis bullosa, to play games for prolonged periods without irritation. When it became clear that its construction also provided benefits for gamers, with and without disabilities, a small business was born.

“Dave”, a customer, emailed to ask an update on his order. Initially brief responses from Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing, the PR contact for iControl (the manufacturers and distributors of Kotkin’s design), unfolded under further questioning into something entirely… other.

Feel free to cancel we need the units were back ordered 11,000 units so your (sic) 2 will be gone fast. Maybe I’ll put them on eBay for 150.00 myself. Have a good day Dan.

And that’s where it all gets instructive…

Lesson 1: Customers can start bar-room brawls. Bartenders shouldn’t

This suggestion was in response to Dave’s complaint that he, having preordered more than two months ago, was now seeing a 10% discount offered for new orders – thus apparently punishing him for having handed over his money early. Whether you think this is a valid complaint probably depends on whether you are a vendor or a consumer. Placing an order always involves an implicit risk that you will miss out on a better offer later – I paid around $12 for ‘Nuclear Dawn‘ a week ago, only to find it discounted to $5 in the Steam sale. Que sera sera, c’est la vie, caveat emptor, as my prep school motto reads.

However, Dave was at liberty to threaten to withdraw his order – that’s customer escalation. Customer service mocking that liberty as ineffectual is bartender escalation -and that’s a very bad idea. Because:

Lesson 2: Mention the Man in Black, and he will hear about it

Even in supposedly private media, such as password-protected blogs or email exchanges, there is now way to guard against what LiveJournal users call the “cut-and-paste fairies”. Whatever you say might end up in a public forum.

In this case, Dave copied his lengthy and quite splenetic response to a number of influential game commentators and news sources. One of these was Penny Arcade (Link NSFW, and contains offensive humour), a multimillion-dollar publishing empire built by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from humble origins as a gaming webcomic.

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Paul from Ocean Marketing is rude and unprofessional. Don’t waste your time ordering this controller, not until they get a new marketing guy. I ordered the avenger controller for my son who has Tourette’s. He has a lot of motor tics in his hands and can’t hold a regular controller for long. I never got it and when I emailed the company, I was asked if I wanted to cancel my order and let someone else get my controller, that I’d be making someone else happy for Christmas. I didn’t want my order cancelled, I wanted my son’s controller. The order was finally cancelled by Amazon because after a month and a half, it still wasn’t mailed by the seller. What a shame, the original designer of this controller wanted it to help kids like my son, and buyers can’t even get it because of a poor choice in marketing representation.

To update – I’ve been in touch with N-Control, and they say that Paul Christoforo no longer represents them in any way. The new consultant handling their marketing is Moises Chiullan.

There are some sites who might be able to provide some more options for your son – notably Able Gamers – http://www.ablegamers.com/ – and the Border House – http://borderhouseblog.com/ – both of which have as all or part of their remit looking at gaming for people with disabilities.

To clarify a few things, in: “Placing an order always involves an implicit risk that you will miss out on a better offer later – I paid around $12 for ‘Nuclear Dawn‘ a week ago, only to find it discounted to $5 in the Steam sale. ”

But the transaction was complete and you received a game. In this case, money was paid and nothing was given. Those who made a new order would also have to wait (essentially making them a pre-order) and they would get $10 off.

Also, Dave wasn’t totally canceling this order. He was going to cancel and then order it again for the $10 off. It ended up that the company gave everyone $10 off. :)

Thank you for the kind words! You’re quite right regarding the difference between Nuclear Dawn and the Avenger – I did indeed get something out of that extra $7 or so, if only the opportunity to have the game sit in my Steam library for a week.

Discounting a product that has yet to be released is certainly a trickier proposition – and applying the discount universally is the best response to the situation, and probably the one that should have been adopted from the start.

(Although, a note – Dave pointed out that he could cancel his order and reorder at the discount, but was told that his reorder would not be accepted. So, at least according to the discussion with Christoforo, cancelling and reordering was not an option.)

Also, remember that Dave was pointing out, quite correctly, that N-Control did not take a preorder where you lay a nominal payment down to reserve a product. N-Control took the full retail price and did not deliver a product. Essentially, N-Control committed fraud in the inducement while also making money off the interest in the collecting the full retail price of all their orders and not delivering a product. They profited by having the funds in reserve in an interest-bearing account. That’s not what any purchaser signed up for and is not part of the understanding between customer and vendor. Dave had real legitimate legal claims that N-Control did not address nor make up to their customer base. They can disassociate all they want from Ocean but their business practices are STILL SUSPECT.

I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t have a position there, but in PR terms – as has been made very clear – the whole thing has been an inferno – lots of heat, lots of light, lots of confusion. As I say at the end of the piece, N-Control has to ship product. That’s absolutely essential. And, before shipping product, they need to be absolutely transparent about the shipping schedule. And, while being absolutely transparent about the shipping schedule, they need to make it up to customers who have been waiting for their order to be fulfilled, which includes offering refunds if requested. Essentially, many of the things which were not apparently being handled well up to this explosion.

Absolutely one of the best articles I’ve read on the “Laws of physics in Commerce”. Hopefully Paul Christoforo will print it, learn it and live by it. Based on how he responded in his interview with In-Game on MSNBC.com I doubt that he even gets it.

Interesting analysis of the deeper issues behind what often seems like disproportionate mass anger. I’d be curious to hear what you think about Krahulik’s comment about the flow of power — his sense that his own real power is in drawing attention to an issue, not in responding to it directly. Is bringing mob wrath to bear a greater punishment than canceling a booth at Pax?

I think the sheer mass of readership makes the former potentially more damaging than the latter. It also extends beyond the relatively small number of entities looking to hire booths at PAX.

That said, I don’t believe this outcome was wholly predictable, although it is also not wholly unlikely. I believe the sharing of the email exchange was a necessary condition for the storm which then broke over Christoforo, but not the only condition. There were a number of factors – it taking place over the holidays, when people had time on their hands, the intensely viral character of the email exchange, the various nerves Christoforo’s behaviour touched in Penny Arcade’s readership and elsewhere. Perhaps most of all, the sense of having a real impact on the world – and on somebody else’s life – kept the momentum going, and the sense that there were more dominoes out there to fall.

I think Krahulik’s comment runs both ways – he’s saying that he cannot control how people respond to the information he presents. Which is probably largely true, certainly when the number of responses ramifies like this.

This kind of lightning can’t be put back in the bottle, and what happens after it is uncorked is where things get interesting, in terms of new frontiers in corporate communications.

I think this is a reasonable article. I have read some other articles, one of which from Kotaku which mentioned to a degree that Paul is sort of a victim, as Paul tries to paint himself. One thing I have found, however, is Paul is not always telling the accurate truth and at the same time, his actions towards people was deplorable.

As much as I am one to state that the customer is not always right, even I know better than to do what Paul has done in this case. I can say, from one actual situation I witnessed how it should have been handled.

I was in a restaurant, a man walked in wanting the special but at a certain price. The owner working the register at the time, tried to explain it calmly, and offered a compromise. The man paid the owner, but then started making beligerant comments. Did the owner berate the customer? No, what he did was take the money that the customer gave to him and returned it. He politely asked the man to leave, as he was not willing to serve the customer who was being beligerent to the situation and felt that there was little he could do to best serve him at this time.

This was how the owner handled the situation when he felt it was unattenable and did not wish his business.

Paul, on the other hand, failed to even offer this modicum of tact. His excuse for it being ‘a bad day’ is one that no one in customer service or public relations should be showing, regardless of how they feel, to a customer.

Add to this, by the time you posted this, news that he had tried to extort N-Control with regards to their own Digital Assets such as the domain and the e-mail, and further explanation from Chiullan at possibly how those assets were handled, that Paul Christoforo cannot be trusted with client assets.

It begs the question that while many people are filling in roles they are not suited for, that this person is not suited for any job that requires personal interaction to customers or the public in any form or way or be allowed to control anything public facing. As far as Marketing, or Public Relations, his reputation is completely and utterly black marked.

well, i think they now change their staffs and manager,its because i have ordered my avenger controller ps3 and xbox 360, they quickly ship my order,and they have amazing customer service and when i try to ask them a favor to teach me how to attached the device, they had a great customer service support to teach me.